Pantheon (2022) – On the uploading process
I won’t discuss here the cheesy pro-humanity crap, the love-here-and-compassion-there narrative for the masses. But I want to talk about the uploading process.
The only way UI could actually work is if you progressively and slowly move to the metal. Otherwise you die, and the other is just a clone, it’s not you. Everyone who understands the hard problem of consciousness can understand this. The videogame Soma (2015) understands that, even though it doesn’t explicitly tell you that there really is no “coin toss” – left for the player to figure that out?
Actually, even if done like I’m suggesting, you can’t be sure that it’s going to work, for example if something along the lines of Roger Penrose’s ideas is true. But I know for sure that it’s guaranteed not to work by means of a copying process.
While it’s understandable for a family to enjoy the company of a clone of a deceased – in the same way that stupid people nowadays fall in love with chatbots – it doesn’t make sense for someone to think that he can be saved by uploading, since his consciousness is going to be erased. In the anime we only see how the Indian company does it, and it is said to be a “crude knockoff of Holstrom’s tech”. However, Laurie Lowell, in S01E7, explains very well how the American company did it to her:
“My brain was sliced apart one layer of neurons at a time by a precision surgical laser, which simultaneously scanned and mapped every neural connection. That data was then coded into a dynamic emulation of my brain, a copy which could only be made by destroying the original.”
That’s basically the exact same way, with the difference that the patient is not awake, but in some sort of sleep/coma – a more humane process:
“You were awake?!!”
Laurie Lowell to Vinod Chanda, shocked seeing his procedure on video.
So we know for sure that they don’t do it like you should (IMO) be supposed to do IRL, i.e. by slowly moving the brain connections to the metal, before destroying the brain.
It is called an “uploading process”, and the result is called an “uploaded intelligence”. But you are not uploading yourself, you are just copying data.
But there’s more.
Assuming you’ve transferred your consciousness correctly, you should then never shut down the artificial brain. Underclocking is fine (probably!), but if you completely shut it down, once you reboot you can never be sure that the same consciousness/perception/“you” is going to manifest. The identity would be the same, but the consciousness may not be the previous one. You would, again, be dead.
This leads us to backups: for the same reason, the whole idea of backups doesn’t work. The consciousness must be running all the time. So you could split it into two artificial brains (assuming that would work) but you cannot shut it down and just copy the data, because it would be just that: data. The consciousness would be gone.
And the last thing is transferring: same problem. You move bits to another server: great. Now you can recreate that same identity on another server. Only problem is, your consciousness is gone. Goodbye. And welcome to the new one, which you will never experience.
In the anime’s defense, it must be recognized that backups and transferring are very cyberpunk and important features, fundamental to create a compelling story. So one just has to accept to use suspension of disbelief[🡕]. It’s certainly at least way less stupid than the whole premise of Severance (2022)…